‘The Americans’ Season 5, Episode 7: Keep Paige Out of This

Season 5, Episode 7: ‘The Committee on Human Rights’

There wasn’t a lot of happiness to go around in “The Americans” this week. And that was despite seeing Elizabeth and Philip score what may be the greatest triumph of their careers: stealing a stalk of super wheat from a Mississippi field and delivering it to Gabriel, who planned to take it with him back to Moscow where it could help feed the hungry Soviet masses.

“I feel like one of the guys in the posters,” Philip said as they squatted in the Mississippi mud — although, with his pony-tailed Southern-man disguise, he wasn’t looking very heroic.

The episode, titled “The Committee on Human Rights,” also began with a tender moment: the conclusion of Paige’s visit with Gabriel. She was pleased with his praise for her and her parents, and she saw that this spy thing wasn’t just business. “He’s like — your family,” she said to Philip. Her spy antennas were out, though — she noticed the lack of photographs and realized they were in a safe house.

Her meeting with Gabriel was warm and fuzzy, but its consequences weren’t. Feeling a stronger sense of duty than ever, she dropped the bomb on Matthew, telling him she couldn’t be his girlfriend anymore. It was a sad, awkward scene, with an emotional Paige flaring into anger and contradicting herself. Poor Matthew. It’s hard enough to understand a teenager in the first place, let alone one who says “You don’t know me” when she means “You don’t know I’m a Soviet spy in training.” When a distraught Matthew tried to grab her, Paige’s reaction — an Elizabeth-like hard shove — shocked her as well as him.

Where does this go? Nowhere good, I’d guess. Paige’s story could play out with her as the good and competent soldier, but all signs point toward an impending crisis. Elizabeth loves her daughter, but she’s still clueless about the depth of Paige’s anguish, telling Philip that Paige is basically O.K. (At some point the scales will fall off and Elizabeth will have to respond to Paige purely as her mother, and that will be a great moment in the show’s history.)

Leave it to Gabriel to see things clearly. As he left for Moscow, his last words to Philip were: “You were right about Paige. She should be kept out of all this.” And the episode closed on Philip’s shocked and alarmed expression.

In that solemn goodbye scene — if it was our last sight of Frank Langella as Gabriel, it was an agonizing reminder of how great he was in the role — Gabriel confirmed Philip’s fears about the methods of his K.G.B. employers. “People were shot, worked to death in the camps,” Gabriel said. “Some were counter-revolutionaries. But some — some hadn’t done anything. Just people. I did it, too.” He offered no reassurance about the greater good: “I believed I was acting in the service of a higher purpose. But I was just scared.”

Philip was clearly worried about present practices as well. Elizabeth had carried out her assignment at the psychiatrist’s office, stealing a document labeled “Committee on Human Rights.” Philip asked Gabriel about it, and Gabriel casually said that it was information about people who were part of “a well-organized opposition at home.” Philip looked apprehensive, presumably at the thought that their work was being used against innocent dissidents.

Back at home, Oleg was free of the C.I.A. This made his mother happy, but he didn’t seem too excited about it — you had to wonder whether he would have been happier if the Americans had shown up. Later we saw him at an archive looking up his mother’s file from the four years she spent in a gulag. This lined up with Gabriel’s memories and also invoked the ghost of Nina Krilova. (The photograph of the young, haggard woman in the file looked a little like Nina at the end.)

Nina’s spirit also hovered over Stan and Dennis’s second meeting with their potential recruit, Miss Kovalenko, who works at the Soviet news agency Tass. (The meeting took place at Rock Creek Park, so there were also associations with Martha Hanson’s great escape.) The contact was jumpy, and honest Stan told her that, yes, if things went south she might spend her life in a Soviet prison. She walked away without making a deal, and Dennis was not pleased with his partner. Later, Stan learned from Wolfe that the success of his Oleg gambit had accrued a cost: The bosses wanted Stan taken out of counterintellgence. Wolfe protected Stan by saying that their current assignment was too important, which could be bad news for Kovalenko: Whatever concern he’s shown so far, Stan has extra motivation to reel her in now.

We’ve probably seen the last of Mississippi, and there was some grim humor in our final looks at Deirdre and Ben, the Southern sexual dupes who weren’t dupes. Deirdre surprised Philip with her American free-mindedness — she just wants him for sex — but he got the last laugh, using his new expertise with Lotus to steal the information leading to the wheat field. And Ben had a surprise of his own: While he was being watched by the Jenningses, it became clear that he was two-timing Elizabeth.

We, and Philip, could see that it jolted her. “It’s O.K. to care,” Philip said. But he forgot that he was talking to the toughest woman in the Western Hemisphere. “No it isn’t, Philip,” she said. “Not for me.”

The real comic relief of the episode, slight as it was, came from Stan, who decided to let his guard down a tiny bit and tried to explain to Renee what was bugging him at work, without giving anything away. After he told her about the “thing” that happened that almost got him fired, he seemed visibly relieved in a way no one else on this show is capable of being. “Thanks,” he said, the episode’s funniest line.

So we’re still left wondering what’s up with Renee. (Also, what was up with the stain on Philip’s shirt in Kansas?) The show has been so ominously suggestive in her regard that it seems she must have a secret — unless she’s the reddest of red herrings. In a gasp-inducing moment, Philip asked Gabriel flat-out whether she was “one of us.” Gabriel denied it, saying, “You’re losing it, Philip,” but he seemed to be protesting too much. Your rampant speculation is invited in the comments.